Reversal and transposition distance of linear chromosomes

In recent years we are seeing increasing interest in research on mutational events acting on large portions of chromosomes. Among these events, a reversal acts on a fragment of a chromosome, reversing the order and orientation of the genes, and a transposition moves fragments from one region to another within a chromosome. We analyze genomes evolving by reversals and transpositions. We present approximation algorithms to compute the reversal and transposition distance for linear permutations, and a lower bound on the reversal and transposition diameter of signed linear permutations